The Best of Bonham: A Look at the Isolated Drum Tracks

One could consider John Bonham, of Led Zeppelin, to be one of the greatest rock drummers of all time. Honestly, it doesn't really matter to me. For me, a drummer is somebody who glues the song together with their timing and steady beat, but I do love a drummer who throws in a couple good fills. Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, Dave Grohl. Those are a few good ones, and some of my favorites. But Bonahm? I think that he had some very good ideas for his drums, and a long time ago, I found some of his isolated drum tracks from many studio sessions of Led Zeppelin albums.

We'll start with "Whole Lotta Love" from "Led Zeppelin II". The full studio multitracks (About 8 or so) for a couple songs were leaked thanks to a bootleg CD of the making of the album. One thing that I should note, is that you can hear the guitar and bass tracks in the intro, and faintly in certain parts of the song. Well, that's because all instruments were recorded together. Not in the same room exactly, but in different rooms, so that each instrument could be seperated enough to feature not so much bleed as heard. Yes, you can hear it faintly, when the drums are playing, but it was good enough for the time this was recorded.

But enough about instrument bleed, let's talk about Bonham's drumming for a second. While I listen to this, I think I can figure out how this was recorded. I can hear the kick very clearly, and the snare as well, so I think this used about 3-4 mics at a maximum for kick, snare, and the overhead mic. One thing I also find pretty interesting about this drum track, is that somewhere around the 3:45-4:00 mark, you can hear somebody - presumably Bonham yelling over the drums faintly. I like that, and it also shows how differently these were recorded in the 60's-70's. But I think that Bonham puts a very good beat to the song. It's not very boomy or special, just a simple beat that goes along very well.

The second, and final song that I'll look at is "All My Love", from their 1979 album "In Through the Out Door". This of course is one of their later albums, and it maintains a really, and I mean really great sound. I'm guessing it was around this time they started to experiment with more drum microphones, because the toms sound a bit louder than on the last track. But what I really love about this drum track is how great it sounds for something recorded in the late 70s/early 80s. Besides the synth track in the beginning, and Bonham's grunting over the drum track, which is still faint, it's pretty well recorded. I also love that loud, boomy, reverb that each drum gives off. The kick sounds very powerful, and I think it may be the microphone's placement that helped with that. (While most bands now and then would put a microphone inside the kick drum, Led Zeppelin seems to record with it outside of the kick drum, but pointing towards the drum skin. I don't know if this is a picture from the recording of said album, but it does sound like this was how it was recorded as shown in the picture.)

But in my opinion, I would say that Bonham was a very interesting drummer, and he'd come up with some very interesting beats for his time, and some of them are pretty iconic for drummers who happen to be fans of the classic rock genre, including me!